L'Oréal Paris: when the problem is not that nobody knows, but that everyone knows something slightly different

Context

L'Oréal Paris: when the problem is not that nobody knows, but that everyone knows something slightly different

The object of the engagement deserves emphasis, because it is rarely stated this directly. Internal alignment here is not a desirable side effect of strategy work: it is the intended result. That changes the design of the whole exercise.

For a very large and very old brand, the problem is almost never that nobody knows what it is. It is that everyone holds a slightly different version, that each version is defensible, and that none is wrong. Divergences therefore do not show up in debates of principle but in concrete trade-offs. Conclusions and proprietary client data are not disclosed.

A brand everyone knows, including internally: L'Oréal Paris is one of the most established mass beauty brands in the world, present across categories as different as facial skincare, make-up, hair colour and haircare, in a very large number of countries.

That breadth produces a particular situation. A small brand has an awareness problem; a very large brand has an interpretation problem. Dozens of teams, spread across categories, markets and functions, work on the same brand every day — and each has built, through experience, a slightly different understanding of it.

Where misalignment actually shows up: Misalignment does not announce itself. It appears in ordinary situations: two campaigns that, taken together, tell two stories; an innovation approved in one market and refused in another for reasons that appear to be about the product when they are about the brand; a creative brief that rewrites the strategy rather than building on it; the same word used by two teams to mean two different things.

These symptoms are diffuse and expensive. They do not cause a crisis; they produce a slow erosion of coherence and a silent multiplication of validation cycles.

Alignment is not consensus: The most common confusion is to treat alignment as agreement. Agreement is observed in a meeting and evaporates afterwards, because it says nothing about what to do in an unforeseen case.

Useful alignment is something else: a shared way of deciding. Aligned teams are not teams that think the same thing; they are teams that, faced with a new trade-off, apply the same criteria and reach compatible conclusions without needing to consult each other.

Why a workshop rather than a document: The objective explains the format. A strategic direction can be written by a small team and circulated; alignment cannot be circulated. It requires the people concerned to have travelled through the reasoning together, tested the disagreements and contributed to the wording retained.

A document received produces assent. A shared reasoning produces ownership. That is the only valid reason to bring teams together for several days.

The difficulty specific to well-established brands: On an old and powerful brand, existing formulations are often excellent — and that is precisely the problem. A strong signature can substitute for strategy: as long as it works, it removes the need to settle the questions it does not address. Clarifying a direction then consists less in rewriting than in making explicit what the existing formulations leave open.

The workshop was framed around questions of this kind:

In a large brand, disagreement almost never concerns what the brand is. It concerns what it should do next Tuesday.

Strategic challenge

The questions that structured the work

Research and work conducted

What the engagement covered

• The first question is the only one that produces an honest diagnosis. Asking teams what they think of the brand produces surface agreement; asking them about real trade-offs surfaces the gaps.
• The approach rests on one principle: alignment is built on cases, not on ideas.
• Surface agreement: Asked what the brand is, experienced teams spontaneously produce agreement. That agreement does not survive the first concrete trade-off, and it conceals the work to be done.
• The strength of existing formulations: On an old brand, the statements in place are often excellent and emotionally charged. Pointing out what they leave open requires care, failing which the exercise is received as a challenge to them.
• Heterogeneous participants: Different categories, markets and functions share neither constraints nor indicators. A common frame that is too abstract serves none of them.
• The relationship to hierarchy: In a group containing several hierarchical levels, disagreements are not expressed spontaneously. Facilitation has to provide mechanisms that surface them without exposing individuals.
• The return to daily work: The effect of a workshop evaporates if nothing changes in decision rituals on return. That sequel has to be designed during the workshop, not hoped for afterwards.
• The temptation to redefine everything: A clarification workshop drifts easily into a full redesign, which was not the request and which produces a deliverable nobody commissioned.

Deliverables

Objects teams can use beyond the engagement

• A diagnosis of misalignment based on real decisions rather than on declarations.
• A reference set of shared definitions for the most-used terms.
• A clarified formulation of strategic direction, built with the teams.
• An explicit statement of what that direction leads the brand to stop doing.
• A set of criteria allowing unforeseen cases to be settled without gathering everyone.
• A distinction between decisions that stay local and those that cannot.
• Alignment indicators observable at a distance, defined during the session.

Key learnings

What this case makes clear

• In a large brand, the problem is not that nobody knows what it is, but that everyone holds a slightly different version.
• Consensus is observed in a meeting; alignment is observed three months later, in an unforeseen decision.
• Divergences appear in concrete trade-offs and remain invisible in discussions of principle.
• A strong signature can substitute for strategy and remove the need to settle what it does not address.
• Alignment cannot be circulated as a document: it requires having travelled through the reasoning together.
• A workshop ending with a text but no application criteria produces agreement that does not survive the first particular case.

For comparable organisations

Where this approach is useful

This case will speak to organisations showing at least one of the following characteristics: An old and powerful brand carried by many teams across categories and markets. Campaigns or launches that, taken together, tell different stories. The same vocabulary used to designate different realities depending on the team. Long validation cycles with no identifiable cause. A historic signature or formulation so strong it removes the need to decide. Team rotation that erases the memory of past reasoning. These situations recur in beauty, food, retail, automotive, telecoms and services — wherever a brand is carried by more teams than a single meeting can hold.